Corsair role: a reflection

Hello fellow Corsairs!
I joined the ranks of the Corsairs long time ago, before it became quite in fashion as it is in these days. Then I took a long pause and Voidwatch and Abyssea happened and I re-joined gladly and I found the wonders we all love to play with.

But yet again my ongoing issue - what's a Corsair aim? what makes a good Corsair? - is still in deep unclean waters. Having, sadly, levelled up a Bard as first job, I'm asked all the time to come as Bard and I obey silently having therefore no possibility in playing this job seriously.

In this forum I saw quite a lot of interesting discussions and feedback so I thought to try to promote and healthy discussion about our lovely job role and the necessary state of the job with constructive feedback.

How's the job seen in the community? Is the job filling quite well its purpose or improvement are much needed?
What makes a good Corsair and why?
And so on.
We have now quite a higher number of Corsair and probably different opinions, but still I would like to understand what the community thinks about this wonderful job and pros and cons.
I noticed that quite often the emphasis on this forum is put on the DD side of the job, supposedly coming to shine only after obtaining Leaden Salute or Wildfire.
How comes so? Are we still so WS dependent that that a mythic is mandatory to be called a good Corsair? Will there be any hope for poor non-hardcore Corsairs?

My guns are a bit rusty, I must admit, but my heart is still a pirate's one.

I still think the job is DD and support combined. A lot of JP players still see it as a BRD with guns. I believe if that was the case SE would have designed our gear entirely differently. Nothing about our best gear screams, "sub WHM and use MP". But that's my personal opinion and not representative of the COR population.

In Abyssea, a COR is most valuable with Wildfire for sure. The atma we can use their make this one of the top WS in Abyssea. Given COR can't natively proc anything other than a few blue procs, having a good WS is about the only thing that makes COR shine.

Outside of Aby, WF and LS aren't nearly as good and therefore, having these WS is not "necessary" to play the job. In voidwatch, your ability to roll Miser's and Tacticians on the melee makes COR a very valuable peice to the group even before damage output is considered. Having Wildfire is still nice due to its skillchain properties, but probably not necessary for every fight. With the new Last Stand WS, that may be more of a go to physical WS outside of Abyssea as test server results suggest its pretty strong. Better than Slugshot and likely more accurate.

My personal playstyle is to go COR/RDM to Aby, COR/DNC to older events like limbus, einherjar, Nyzul, etc., and COR/SAM to VW. I do finally have Wildfire and it is a darn fine WS that every hardcore COR should try to obtain as a goal. You can still be a useful COR without it, but it ups the fun of the job immensely.

As to what makes a good COR.
1) Knows what rolls will make the fight go smoother and applies them consistently
2) Has the ability to add useful damage to the fight while not ignoring 1)
3) Has subjob utility so they can offer different level of support and DD to different fights as appropriate: RDM, SAM, DNC, WHM, RNG, WAR, SCH all have certain utility at various stages and should be available

Miser's Roll and Tactician's Roll gave Corsair viable melee rolls that could compete with and have a place next to Marches without infringing on Bard's territory. Wildfire addressed the job's biggest Endgame failing which was a lack of physical WS potency compared to Ranger (which was a subpar DD itself without a Relic). Magical WS never miss and are independent of Ranged Attack, which plays to Corsair's strengths.

No, Death Penalty is not anywhere near required any more. A good COR will have at least an 85, if not a 90 Armageddon though. It's the easiest Empyrean in the game to make at all stages, and comes in handy for both Wildfire and Last Stand.

A good Corsair is a player who can keep up with his melee DD peers while still giving them epic buffs and making everyone in the party stronger for it. I consistently place top 3 in all Voidwatch parses on my Corsair, and I always win parses on Pil. This is all while maintaining XI Miser's and XI Tacticians on all of my melees fulltime. With the new XI chain feature, there's really very little reason to settle for less than an XI for all of your rolls. Corsair's damage comes almost entirely from WS potency, frequency, and consistency. A Vereth may supercrit and hit a 3.2k Smite every once in a while, but I know that every time my TP hits 100 I'll be able to pull the trigger and launch a 2k Wildfire with a 65 TP return and 12/tic regain.

Cons of Corsair?

No defensive options whatsoever. Corsairs have no native defense, no defensive skills, and translate subjob defensive buffs poorly. This is nullified in Voidwatch due to your ability to spam Invincibility drinks and potions, but in other areas it's a serious problem. More often than not, even in merit parties at 75, I'd find that getting hate on Cor/War was almost always a death sentence - and it happened a lot. Cor/Sam is now a vastly superior subjob for general DD with Wildfire, since Berserk is moot and Sekkanoki allows us to self-Darkness, so we do have Seigan, but that's still very minor.

Pros of Corsair?

Ability to deal severe, consistent damage at a range. Extremely powerful party buffs. Instant, jump-like TP and damage at a range. Ability to nullify the effects of low Accuracy and/or Attack on a physically resistant target without being a silly robe-wearer. And being a god damn Pirate.

Corsair is still heavily WS-dependent, but the scope of the WS's have changed. Leaden Salute is passable in Abyssea but suffers horrendously outside of it. Wildfire is about on par with other Empyrean WS inside Abyssea, but Corsair lacks the white damage (TP phase) to keep up with a real Abyssea DD. Wildfire, however, still shines quite a bit outside Abyssea where many other WS drop off.

Last Stand is also a powerful Marksmanship WS, but it requires a lot of merits and gil to be used well. I have the WS at 5/5, but my set is still a work in progress. I feel like I'm lacking a good deal of Ranged Attack, as it's underperforming compared to Wildfire, so it needs some tweaking. This is what I'm currently using for Last Stand: http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/241091

In general, Corsair is really not a job that's friendly for extremely-casual players. I'm pretty casual tbh, only logging in on weekends mostly, but that didn't stop me from getting an Armageddon. It's extremely easy/quick to run through, and it's pretty much a requirement to even start being effective on COR. While the buffs are nice on their own, Corsair shines because it's able to DD as well as a melee while giving them. Take that away, and you've basically got a crappy Bard.

I think like Mirabelle (and like her i play cor since Toau release), light DD and support (was very fun in colibri party long time ago).
I didn't use my cor for quite a while since the release of abyssea, but since VWNM, the lead asked me to come as cor/rng for marksmanship proc, cor ability and tactician's roll), and it's really fun.

Cor is loved in Voidwatch and thus very much relevant to the newest content. Its DD aspect is very strong, it's not subpar at all as people called it once. Last Stand is a very good ws, but Wildfire was basically designed for us, you should get it. It's like Leaden, but much better. However having Armageddon on cor isn't really necessary. Due to our insane tp generation, shooting is rarely to never needed and thus the aftermath becomes useless 90% of the time(however Arma still has lots of agi and a high coolness factor which you can't ignore!), so you could settle with a Bedlam...but meh, honestly Arma takes less time lol.

Corsair fares a lot better in the Age of Voidwatch than the Age of Abyssea. Actually, Corsair fares better in Voidwatch than it has in any other event. The event is almost tailor-made for the job. Ranged damage is great, magic damage is great, the unique properties of Quickdraw are great, the unique buffs provided by Miser's Roll and Tactician's roll are great.

It's not so hot for duo/trio stuff like Neo-Dynamis, but Corsair never performed well for that sort of content so that's no surprise.

If you're serious about the job, I'd strongly recommend getting an Armageddon up to level 85-90 as soon as you can. It's actually easier to make than a Bedlam. It's probably even easier to make than a fire-path Elemental trial weapon, depending on how broful your bromance with your bros happens to be.

If you're serious but not that serious, then Last Stand is still a huge improvement over Slugshot. Under neutral conditions, Last Stand and Wildfire should do similar damage. Being able to use excellent physical and magical weaponskills without the need to change weapons is a huge boon for the job, though.

However having Armageddon on cor isn't really necessary. Due to our insane tp generation, shooting is rarely to never needed and thus the aftermath becomes useless 90% of the time(however Arma still has lots of agi and a high coolness factor which you can't ignore!), so you could settle with a Bedlam...but meh, honestly Arma takes less time lol.

To expand though, you pretty much need either Bedlam or Armageddon (or Death Penalty) to be a good Cor. Wildfire is just that much better than Leaden Salute. In fact, unless you pump in some decent attack from buffs/food, it tends to equal or out-do Slugshot on anything EM or higher.

Luckilly, there's still the illusion of "high cost" about the job, what with ammo/card expendables and 100k+ gil Dice. That keeps most bad players away from it.

Luckilly, there's still the illusion of "high cost" about the job, what with ammo/card expendables and 100k+ gil Dice. That keeps most bad players away from it.

I think the illusion became reality with the introduction of the orichalcum bullet. Currently the best COR bullet for TP, Last Stand and Wildfire and running anywhere from 50k-150k/stack. Of course most people will stick with bronze/steel bullets and only use O.bullets for QD if they don't have Omphalos (or have shot it away). But in an ideal world this should be the fulltime bullet for COR.

It's hardly an imperative upgrade though. The only significant upgrade from them is TP phase/slug shot DMG, a very small part of our total damage, losing 12DMG over Oberon's which are much cheaper now pouches drop from GoV. For wildfire, it's a loss of 2MAB over a bronze bullet, hardly worth the cost. I wouldn't call Cor high-cost just because of orichalcum bullets, the same as at 75 I wouldn't call WAR high cost because of Cerb Mantle +1. It's the best, sure. But a minimal upgrade.